The DNS packet parsing/generation code in PowerDNS (aka pdns) Authoritative Server 3.4.x before 3.4.6 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via crafted query packets.

According to its self-reported version number, the version of the PowerDNS Authorative Server listening on the remote host is version 3.4.x prior to 3.4.6. It is, therefore, affected by a denial of service vulnerability due to an unspecified flaw in 'pdns/distributor.hh' related to DNS packet parsing and generation. A remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability, via crafted query packets, to crash the server.

Note that Nessus has not attempted to exploit this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.
Also, Nessus has not checked for the presence of the patch or the workaround.

- Upstream released new version - Security fix for     CVE-2015-5230

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

PowerDNS reports :

A bug was found in our DNS packet parsing/generation code, which, when exploited, can cause individual threads (disabling service) or whole processes (allowing a supervisor to restart them) to crash with just one or a few query packets.

Pyry Hakulinen and Ashish Shakla at Automattic discovered that pdns, an authoritative DNS server, was incorrectly processing some DNS packets; this would enable a remote attacker to trigger a DoS by sending specially crafted packets causing the server to crash.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
86699	PowerDNS Authoritative Server 3.4.x < 3.4.6 distributor.hh Packet Handling DoS	Nessus	DNS	high
86159	Fedora 22 : pdns-3.4.6-1.fc22 (2015-14952)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
86158	Fedora 23 : pdns-3.4.6-1.fc23 (2015-14951)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	medium
85757	FreeBSD : powerdns -- denial of service (55c43f5b-5190-11e5-9ad8-14dae9d210b8)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	high
85753	Debian DSA-3347-1 : pdns - security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2015-5230

high

Tenable Plugins

high

medium

medium

high

high